The heavy flooding in China’s Guangxi region has created an unusual secondary hazard: hundreds of snakes escaping from inundated breeding farms.
Authorities have been on high alert after snake farms were flooded, sending large numbers of reptiles, including venomous cobras, into nearby villages and farmland, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Teams have been deployed to capture the escaped snakes, and temporary medical clinics have been set up to ensure rapid treatment for bite victims.
Guangxi is China’s largest center for commercial snake farming, with about 30 million reptiles bred for traditional medicine, leather products and meat. The region has been hit by deadly storms that have also flooded pig farms, damaged jasmine plantations and disrupted timber production, showing the wide-ranging consequences of increasingly volatile weather.
A woman in Hengzhou, a city in Guangxi, has died after being bitten by a snake, local media reported. She reached a hospital only after a prolonged journey because roads were blocked. A man who was bitten while cleaning his flood-damaged home on Tuesday also endured a difficult trip to a hospital as deep floodwaters blocked access.
At least 900 snakes are at large, according to the Global Times and other Chinese media outlets. Videos showing residents walking through thigh-high floodwaters to catch the elusive reptiles spread rapidly online.
Guangxi is also the world’s largest snake breeding hub after decades of expansion from backyard farms into an industry supplying pharmaceutical and biotech products, according to the communist party-run Guangxi Daily. The boom turned local villagers into millionaires and spawned hundreds of businesses across the supply chain, from breeding and processing to research.
Snakes are not the only animals that have been affected by the flooding.
Pig farms in various parts of the region were inundated, with some hogs forced to swim for their lives. The heavy rain also wreaked havoc at a zoo in Guigang, a city in Guangxi, where more than 100 animals went missing after the downpour damaged their enclosures. The zoo issued an emergency appeal on Wednesday, asking local citizens for help to find the missing animals, which included two zebras, two ostriches and 30 peacocks.
